Oma's OUT, Nana's IN!

Good evening friends and family,

Kendra and I bid farewell to Oma Burgess who has been such a pleasure to have around our house for the past month. Oma changed her flight to stay one day longer than her original plan. That was a huge relief since I was out of town and Kendra would have been alone for 24 hours with the twins, which is a mountainous task at this age. I begged her, “are you SURE you can’t stay for another few days or weeks?” But we knew she needed to get back home to tend to her own house and life. It was a sad day for Kendra to say goodbye to her mom and she cried a few times… every hour…

But guess who flew into Arizona just a few hours later? My mom, Connie will hence forth be known as Nana. I picked her up at the airport and she barely took time to close the front door to our house behind her before making a bee-line towards the babies and Kendra to hug them. I think her comment was, “who’s first?” trying to figure out which one of the babies was available to hold. Since Easton was drooling on himself as he laid motionless in the swing, Nana held Layla and there she’s been on the couch (in her suit outfit) talking through the details of how this crazy household functions.
Uncle Dave’s Memorial Service:
Chronologically this post will be a complete mess so don’t try and figure out the timing of everything. I’m just trying to get down some key points and pictures while I have a few minutes. I arrived home today from Oklahoma where I helped bury my best friend, Uncle Dave over the weekend. The sheer volume and diversity of emotions I’ve felt during the past few weeks has been overwhelming in a way I can’t even describe. I was at Dave’s side at 3:00 AM and he passed away at 5:57 AM on March 1st.

I’m honored to have been there for support and help during the past few months. The day before the memorial service Mary, his neighbor “big Dave”, and I had the chance to spend time in private with Uncle Dave as he lay in the open casket. I spent literal hours during the past few months sitting next to Uncle Dave while he was alive. I would watch him sleep, struggling for every breath while multiple noisy pieces of equipment hummed and beeped continually to assist him. At the funeral home, however, I spent what felt like hours on my knees sobbing with my head on the edge of the casket looking at his peaceful face. It was complete silence in the room and stillness in his body, which really brought the realities of his passing crashing down on me. Big Dave led the memorial service and I had the opportunity to speak. I have no idea if what I said made any sense to others in the room, but it was an incredible service none the less. Mary planned and coordinated a masterpiece service so well that the funeral director praised Mary in front of the entire family for her efforts. Today we went by his grave one last time and took a few pictures.

Anyway, the one consolation to the weekend was seeing family in spite of the circumstances and I was amazed at how other cousins and families have grown up so well. I’ll try to keep the sadness to a minimum for this blog since it is geared towards the twins. However, I have so much to share and a big pile of emotions to work through as these waves of sadness seem to roll in and toss me around every few hours, so bare with me. :)

I apologize for the lack of blogs recently, but fully expect to be back to blogging on a daily basis from here on to the foreseeable future. Oma and Kendra were a little too busy to keep the blog updated, but their priorities were set correctly. Our house is extremely clean and we have two happy babies. I can’t ask for more than that. While I was away Oma was able to catch this great picture of Layla and Easton holding arms as they cuddled. They are so comfortable being right up next to each other. I missed them very much while I was away and look forward to being in town for many days and weeks.
Catch you tomorrow.